Yeah Chicago.

I'd be really curious to see what types of jobs people took after graduation. MBA's can do a lot of different things, so I wonder if people get paid more because they went to U of C, or if they tend to land in more highly-paid industries because they went to U of C.

Not that I give a crap about these rankings considering George Bush got an MBA from Harvard, but what is readily apparent, and perhaps a bit ironic, is that the correlation between these schools and the best schools to get PhD's in Management is not that high in many cases. Why would that be? I think its because they are focusing on MBAs that emphasize Strategy over anything else. Which just like with US News and World Report make these rankings pretty rank.

If you're interested, you should also take a look at Schools outside the US. IMD, LBS, UWO, and others are normally ranked quite high in comparison to the top 30 US schools.

I didn't see the University of Phoenix in there.

MBA school is pretty relaxing. All you do is make business plans and strategies. Kinda fun if you're into creativity...

@mconfoy:

Not to be insulting, but their is a belief that those who pursue PhD's in management probably were failures or not able to achieve much on the outside, while those who were successfull, never had any reason to go back to school again.....at least that how some MBA's viewed their professors.

@mandarin:

You must have went to a real bad program if thats all you had to do for your MBA.

Hey, I got an MBA!

[www.amazon.com]

@drotor:
Where are these schools?

Per Answers.com:
IMD - Intermodulation distortion
LBS - Location Based Services
UWO - University of Western Ontario - I guess that's in Ontario.

@Sonnymooks:
In undergrad, I minored in business administration. A lot of the classes were a joke, and in one of them, we used crayons. I can't imagine the graduate classes were that much harder.

MBA's are why American businesses are so screwed up!
Hahvahd being the one that has caused the most damage!
May they all rot in Hell!

this article is a year old. what happened, no retail store price sign mistakes today?

@segfault: @segfault: Your imagination is not very good then. There are those that do and those that imagine they could. Pray tell us what school you went to that had you using crayons as it has to be worth a laugh or two.

Wow, those ranking match nobody elses? Did they use a dartboard or a monkey to determine them.

Then again it's Business Week. They probably couldn't afford a monkey. When your ripping off US News and World Report, its time to close up shop.

I used to participate in these rankings as an employer voter. There's no real standard for what qualifies as "best" from an employer standpoint. The best schools are obviously good...the rest of the process is about egos. But it does get a few folks fired every year.

What B-School you went to only matters if your prospective employer went to the same B School. Then there is usually a little bias.

Sorry, but those are pretty much in the Top 10 FULL-TIME MBA programs on any list any year. ONe thing to note is that the surveys often include asessments potential employers who tend to skew against the schools where grads drive a hard-bargain at hiring time, sted of just gratefully takign a job offer after interning.

For example, Columbia has a highly rated program, but employers are a bit put off by the sharp elbows that come with the many grads who already worked on Wall Street and are not, shall we say, "shy" about going after the jobs and compensation packages they want.

@segfault:

I do feel bad saying this, but you got ripped off badly. Most of my MBA time was spent doing financial analysis and accounting. If I had had to use a crayon at any point, I probably would have tossed it at the prof.

I didn't like some of the stuff I thought was useless, but as the joke went, if you were creative and had a healthy imagination, you should be in marketing......and stay the hell away from the books.

Sidenote: When it comes to marketing and advertising, business really does copy the dilbert cartoon.

@bbbici:

Not really, thats like saying High School only matters if your employer went to the same one.

There's a book that's just come out recently, and of course I'm blanking on the name, but the author's argument is that B-schools in the US have mostly moved away from substantive training and education to rubber stamping anyone who can afford the degree and put in the time to do it, with relatively dire results.

I saw it reviewed a ton of places a couple months ago, does anyone remember?

@Sonnymooks: As someone in marketing/advertising, specifically interactive marketing at one of the top digital agencies on a major beverage account I'd just like to point out how immature and myopic your comment was.

I would LOVE to see you try to develop an integrated cross-channel strategy and measurement plan.

Every industry has their Dilbert PHB's but don't for a second think marketing/advertising isn't a critical part of business that absolutely requires intelligence, logic, creativity and wit to make successful.

The Fortune 500 companies that newly-minted MBA's apply for would go out of business in short order if they had Dilbert-esque PHB's in their marketing departments.